At 11:50 p.m., ten minutes before the end of the week, Shad sat in the unlit living room, playing with the time key carefully selected by Professor Garcia.
The weather was very good tonight, and the moonlight entered the living room through the window. The three colors of moonlight mixed together, and the strange light shone on Shad's legs and on the back of the cat lying on Shad's legs.
Mia is an orange and white cat, with the pattern on her back mainly orange. According to what Shad thought when he first saw her on the roof, this cat looked like a white cat covered with an orange blanket.
Its fur color is quite good, whether in the sun or in the moonlight, it seems to be able to reflect light. Because Shade has to go on a new time adventure tonight, he can't go to bed early, so the cat did not go to the bedroom to sleep alone, but took a nap on Shade's legs.
It must not be asleep. Xia De even thought that if he suddenly shouted in the silence at this moment, the cat would definitely be scared and jump up.
Of course, he wouldn't do that.
Thinking about the relationship between himself and his friends, thinking about the chosen one and his own path to becoming a god. When the clock in the corner and the city clock tower in the distance rang the midnight bell, Shad patted Mia's cat's butt, and the latter meowed, reluctantly climbed up from his lap with her short legs and jumped onto the sofa.
"Mia, see you in three seconds."
As he spoke, Xia De walked towards the bedroom door. But this time he did not insert the key directly, but hesitated for a moment.
What are you considering
"According to past rules, this time it must be related to the old gods. I am wondering who it will be this time."
Won’t you know it soon
"That's right... May the World Tree protect me as time goes by."
He turned the key, and as the bedroom door opened, white mist floated out of the door like catkins. He thought about these special spaces again:
"Mr. Edmund said that the Guiding Light Hermitage believes that the space left behind by the thirteen ancient gods is the last refuge. What is the reason for this statement?"
As I stepped into the white mist, a familiar voice immediately rang in my ears:
Stranger, you have stepped into the "Corridor of Time".
Message from the ancient god "Father of the Infinite Tree":
Winter of the Fifth Era, 1784, Northern Continent, Dreadfort.
Event: Gambling-Game of Life.
Duration: twenty minutes (1/3).
"Southern Continent - Hope Town, Western Continent - Thousand Tree Forest, and now the Northern Continent - Terrorburgh... The fourth key in a month, won't it be the Eastern Continent?"
You get additional information.
The figure of the Infinite Tree Father watches over you.
The ancient god of time has given you a test.
Help mortals win the "gamble of life".
The Father of the Infinite Tree will give you rewards: Thaumaturgy - Breath of Ages, a piece of true information - Dark Dungeon.
"Dark Dungeon? There's no mention of God in this mission."
Xia De muttered something, and after confirming that there was no other information, he took a step forward.
The white mist around him quickly dissipated, and he stepped on the uneven stone bricks. The light in the white mist faded, and the light suddenly weakened. The dim light of the oil lamp made Xia De a little uncomfortable.
When his vision returned to normal, he immediately noticed a rotten smell in the air. Looking around, he was standing in a long and narrow corridor.
The ground beneath my feet was paved with grey bricks, but due to years of wear and tear, the bricks were no longer smooth. The surrounding walls and the top of the building, about 3 meters high, were all grey-black stone walls that seemed to be crumbling into dust.
Just touch it and your hands will be covered with dust.
There are square spaces on the wall at regular intervals, with oil lamps placed in the spaces. The light of the oil lamps is the size of soybeans, so when looking forward, the light and dark areas are connected to each other in sections.
Perhaps there were murals on the walls originally, but nothing can be seen now.
The temperature was a bit low, and Xia De sniffed. Since he was not outdoors, he could only choose to move forward or backward. According to the direction he came from, it would be reasonable to continue moving forward, but Xia De still looked behind him curiously.
Behind him was the same narrow and ancient stone corridor, but without any oil lamps. Shade looked into the darkness that extended to an unknown area, and suddenly saw a pair of scarlet eyes in the darkness.
He was not a timid person, and he had seen far more bizarre scenes in this world. But when he saw those eyes, his body instinctively trembled with fear. Those eyes had the power to directly arouse fear in people's hearts.
It was getting closer and closer, and the oil lamps around Shade flickered immediately. Although he didn't know the consequences of the oil lamps going out, Shade immediately ran forward.
The oil lamps behind him went out one by one, and the fire in front of him was also shaking. Xia De felt the chill that seemed to freeze his soul was gradually invading his back, and the chill was becoming more and more obvious.
"Really? Why can't the Infinite Tree Father just send me to my destination? It's always like this... Silver Moon!"
He pointed behind him, and as the silver moonlight burst out, the chill behind him really moved away. The end of the corridor finally appeared in front of him. It was a closed red copper metal door. There was no hole or decorative pattern on the door, only a flipped coin symbol.
Xia De was ready to unlock the door, but he didn't expect that when he rushed to the door, the door would be pushed open with a slight push.
He quickly rushed into the room, then turned around and closed the door tightly. He used his body to push against the door, but the inexplicable thing outside the door did not have any intention of hitting the door.
Even if you put your ear against the door, you can't hear any sound from outside.
Feeling slightly relieved, Xia De turned around and looked inside the room. He saw a man with a haggard face, as if he had not washed his hair or taken a bath for several months. He was standing beside a square stone table, staring at him in amazement.
The style of the interior of the room is basically the same as that of the corridor outside. The ground is made of uneven square bricks and the gaps between the bricks and stones are filled with ashes. The walls above and around are uneven, unpainted stone walls.
The room was not big, about the same size as the bedroom that Shade lived in. There was a square stone table in the middle, and no other complete furniture.
There were some remains of wooden furniture by the wall, but they looked like they had been broken for hundreds of years. There were also dozens of corpses by the right wall. Judging from the degree of decay, the corpses died at different times, but they all kept the same posture of leaning against the wall.
There was an oil lamp placed on the edge of the stone table near Xia De's direction, which was the only light source in the room. But the light of this oil lamp was still as small as a soybean, and very strangely, it could only illuminate Xia De and the strange man's half of the room, while the other side of the room was completely covered by thick darkness.
"man?"
When the other party was looking at Xia De, Xia De was also looking at the other party. In the Fifth Era, there were no men who could use extraordinary powers, so the other party must be just an ordinary person.
He was wearing a brown robe that was so dirty that you couldn't tell its original color, barefoot, and with a turban wrapped around his head. His brown eyes were ordinary, but his thick eyebrows left an impression on Shade.
"Hello... hello?"
The stranger tried to greet Shade using the language of the Fifth Epoch. His voice was hoarse, as if he had not spoken for a long time.
"Hello, sorry, I don't think you understand me."
Xia De also replied that this time the companion was not a witch, which had advantages, but the disadvantage was that they could not communicate at all.
"No, no, I understand! There are special rules in this castle. As long as the language used is not a language with extraordinary power, these languages can be understood by everyone! Excuse me... ...are you human?"
The robed and barefoot stranger asked cautiously again. Shade looked at him in surprise, nodded, and walked closer to the stone table from the shadow of the door.
"Of course I am human, but are you human?"
He extended his hand to the other person, and the man shrank back, then smiled sheepishly at Xia De:
"I'm sorry, I've encountered too many weird things here. Yes, I'm also a human, and it's great to meet companions here."
He reached out his hand, which hadn't been washed for a long time, and held Xia De's hand.
Ordinary human beings.
The smile on Shad's face became more genuine.
The man's name was Sledge Riddle, and he claimed to be a scholar and a prophet. Considering the time point of the Fifth Epoch, his so-called "prophet" was probably similar to the "demon scholar" Sean Asmon that Shad met at the Pink Rose Inn in Coldwater Harbor.
Mr. Riddle probably hadn't encountered a human being for a long time. After confirming or forcing himself to believe that Shade was not a strange thing, he began to tell him his own story in a torrent of words.
He knew that this was the Dreadfort in the northern continent, but he couldn't tell in detail what the "Dreadfort" was. On the one hand, this strange place would erode people's memory, and on the other hand, the prophet seemed to really not know.
While reading ancient documents, Mr. Sledge Riddle accidentally learned the approximate location of the Dreadfort, which "contains ancient knowledge, secrets, and evil". With nothing else to do, he decided to go out for a walk, so he set out from his hometown in the East Continent and started his adventure.
Although he only considered this trip as a study tour and did not hold out much hope of achieving his goal, after experiencing a series of incredible things, this gentleman really found this place.
The middle-aged man in a turban admitted to Shade that he could not remember how long he had stayed in this strange place. The ever-changing terrain inside the castle made him lost and panicked, and the horror and evil things he encountered there made him dare not recall them at all.
Even when Shad simply tried to ask the other person about his experiences during this period, he began to scream and pray hysterically out of fear.
The Dreadfort is similar to Hopetown and the Thousand Trees Forest in that it affects the memory and consciousness of humans who stay there for a long time. Unfortunately, the men of the Fifth Epoch were not as lucky as the three children to be blessed by the good gods, nor were they as powerful as the two witches more than a dozen centuries later.
If Xia De had appeared a little later, he might not even know these most basic situations.